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Calling all MP New Zealanders (Both of you!!)
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<blockquote data-quote="snarlyboy" data-source="post: 65889" data-attributes="member: 22574"><p>I can tell you what I was confused with. It wasn't the scanning - here's what I had/have trouble with: (Most are not NZ specific)</p><p></p><p>1. All the auto-scanning worked fine to my knowledge but my reception sucks even in the biggest city in Auckland so I don't care about the vhf/uhf thing <strong> I just want it to control my digital satellite Sky set top box via the Composite input </strong>of my PVR150MCE.</p><p></p><p>2. <strong>It should be easier to configure and use </strong>(i.e. change channels etc) <strong>when you don't have the guide set up or working yet</strong>. To me getting the guide to work took awhile and especially getting the guide to be the correct time and then getting it to synce to the channels (which at this stage doesn't work since I can't yet control my set top box as channels change in MP).</p><p></p><p>2. I can't figure out<strong> why the usb Hauppauge remote (and its IR blaster) that came with the PVR150MCE don't work instantly with MP</strong>. What I surmise now is that this remote is a Hauppauge branded MCE remote and only works with MCE?? I thought I bought the most popular and powerful pvr card in NZ and the remote side of it has been a pain in the butt. I've installed and uninstalled MP several times to try this - and all of the instructions around for a Hauppauge remote and drivers are for different Hauppauge remotes I gather. I've tried to use HIP, but it's driving me mental why the stop, record, pause buttons etc etc dont work. The best I can do is get the arrow keys and OK to work. At this stage I want a new remote and settopbox ir blaster that will work instantly with no fiddling - any ideas?</p><p></p><p>3. This one is also not NZ specific. There <strong>needs to be a config GUI / extract utility that can save</strong> (or at least tell me what files to save<strong>) selected settings for use on subsequent un/reinstalls</strong>. I really liked the FM radio feature, but spent like 20min setting up frequencies and descriptions after reading Wikipedia's list of all Auckland, NZ radio stations, then had to do it again when I reinstalled it. This is probably an xml file somewhere but I didn't know which one.</p><p></p><p>4. MP has the best one-touch record of all PVRs that I've seen. I couldn't believe you can't just press Record and then Stop to record a snippet of a show in most other apps like SageTV. But in terms of video quality <strong> I can't tell when or if MP is taking advantage of the PVR150's hardware MPEG</strong>. Occasionally I get slight strobing (perhaps this is an interlacing issue) during fast horizontal movement and wondered which codec to use. I have Nero on that system and wondered if its MPEG encoder was better in the event MP wasn't using hardware MPEG??? I noticed Got All Media had a setting in its config for use PVR150's Hardware MPEG but didn't see that in MP - does it have that feature?</p><p></p><p>5. One thing that also perplexes me is why some aspect ratio issues crop up. Sometimes (and I haven't figured out why or when yet - maybe it has to do with which video codec is selected??) certain videos in my My Videos <strong>section will play black (no video) with audio unless you switch them to "Original" aspect ratio</strong>. which if you have a collection of smaller res videos, you'd prefer them to play fullscreen (even if pixelated) to see them on your TV. But other times it is able to display them stretched? why is that? This seems to happen more with MPeg4 Quicktimes than anything else. I think MPEG2s and divxs play ok most of the time but I am not sure on this one. But certainly something is up with why they play intermittently or dont work with Stretched or Normal aspect ratios. Not knowing what or why this was happening was quite annoying when I knew the codec worked as I could play it outside of MP fine.</p><p></p><p>6. <strong>The skins should have tooltips when you hover over a button too long</strong>. And I don't get why all skins dont support all features. It seems strange to me to have different playback controls or some missing for certain skins. Often times the icons are too small to see if you are playing it on say a 25" TV as opposed to a 5ft plasma. It would be nice if there were some standard rules about the skins and their functionality. I am kind of wanting a skin which uses features of the Blue MP look and the MCE wannabe default skins - a combo of those with tooltips would be great.</p><p></p><p>I think those are most of the setup issues I have. Here are a couple of nice-to-have issues - that would be a bonus to me if they could be solved.</p><p></p><p>* Is there a way in the Browser plugin of MP to have a "increase font size even for CSS pages" available? Many sites are still to tiny to read on screen. Perhaps even having a panning navigator where you could scroll horizontally but magnify the page would even be a solution instead of trying to fit the page on my TV out'ed screen?</p><p></p><p>* Why do I sometimes get 404's on the My News RSS reader when it can say get the headlines from Wired Magazine but not the articles? I know they exist. Is this some kind of RSS reader formating issue?</p><p></p><p>* Does MP provide "intelligent" recording in the event I ever actually get the EPG and setopbox control integrated into it smoothly? It would be nice to have that kind of feature like Sage, (but then again I've never been able to import the NZ reven XML guide into anything but MP or got all media). Are those algorithms too hard? Or should I just move back to the USA? <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /> NZ feels like the moon sometimes with no Tivo.</p><p></p><p>* One of the biggest reasons I love MP is the support and the ideas for features coming out for integration into it. I like the Trailers thing (although despite my broadband connection - some of them still stutter and stop during playback? is this a streaming issue? They stream fine in IE outside of MP?) I REALLY LIKE the idea of things like Yahoo Music Video integration or Trailers or ideally a smart YouTube integration - so I could automate MP to automatically get Daily Show or Colbert Report clips from You Tube for watching at my leisure - as our cable system here Sky does not have Comedy Central or Sci Fi channels (yes NZ is a 3rd world country :evil: ). So how could I make such a plugin and is/when will FLV flash video be supported withing MP?</p><p></p><p></p><p>thanks for any and all input to this massive post. I just thought I would respond to your query about what new users are perplexed with. And I have tried every PVR in the past 2 weeks (Sage, Beyond, Got All Media, GBPVR) and settled on MP as it seems the most feature packed and I've had the most success (and performance) with it...</p><p></p><p>plz help or respond if you can to this... <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="snarlyboy, post: 65889, member: 22574"] I can tell you what I was confused with. It wasn't the scanning - here's what I had/have trouble with: (Most are not NZ specific) 1. All the auto-scanning worked fine to my knowledge but my reception sucks even in the biggest city in Auckland so I don't care about the vhf/uhf thing [b] I just want it to control my digital satellite Sky set top box via the Composite input [/b]of my PVR150MCE. 2. [b]It should be easier to configure and use [/b](i.e. change channels etc) [b]when you don't have the guide set up or working yet[/b]. To me getting the guide to work took awhile and especially getting the guide to be the correct time and then getting it to synce to the channels (which at this stage doesn't work since I can't yet control my set top box as channels change in MP). 2. I can't figure out[b] why the usb Hauppauge remote (and its IR blaster) that came with the PVR150MCE don't work instantly with MP[/b]. What I surmise now is that this remote is a Hauppauge branded MCE remote and only works with MCE?? I thought I bought the most popular and powerful pvr card in NZ and the remote side of it has been a pain in the butt. I've installed and uninstalled MP several times to try this - and all of the instructions around for a Hauppauge remote and drivers are for different Hauppauge remotes I gather. I've tried to use HIP, but it's driving me mental why the stop, record, pause buttons etc etc dont work. The best I can do is get the arrow keys and OK to work. At this stage I want a new remote and settopbox ir blaster that will work instantly with no fiddling - any ideas? 3. This one is also not NZ specific. There [b]needs to be a config GUI / extract utility that can save[/b] (or at least tell me what files to save[b]) selected settings for use on subsequent un/reinstalls[/b]. I really liked the FM radio feature, but spent like 20min setting up frequencies and descriptions after reading Wikipedia's list of all Auckland, NZ radio stations, then had to do it again when I reinstalled it. This is probably an xml file somewhere but I didn't know which one. 4. MP has the best one-touch record of all PVRs that I've seen. I couldn't believe you can't just press Record and then Stop to record a snippet of a show in most other apps like SageTV. But in terms of video quality [b] I can't tell when or if MP is taking advantage of the PVR150's hardware MPEG[/b]. Occasionally I get slight strobing (perhaps this is an interlacing issue) during fast horizontal movement and wondered which codec to use. I have Nero on that system and wondered if its MPEG encoder was better in the event MP wasn't using hardware MPEG??? I noticed Got All Media had a setting in its config for use PVR150's Hardware MPEG but didn't see that in MP - does it have that feature? 5. One thing that also perplexes me is why some aspect ratio issues crop up. Sometimes (and I haven't figured out why or when yet - maybe it has to do with which video codec is selected??) certain videos in my My Videos [b]section will play black (no video) with audio unless you switch them to "Original" aspect ratio[/b]. which if you have a collection of smaller res videos, you'd prefer them to play fullscreen (even if pixelated) to see them on your TV. But other times it is able to display them stretched? why is that? This seems to happen more with MPeg4 Quicktimes than anything else. I think MPEG2s and divxs play ok most of the time but I am not sure on this one. But certainly something is up with why they play intermittently or dont work with Stretched or Normal aspect ratios. Not knowing what or why this was happening was quite annoying when I knew the codec worked as I could play it outside of MP fine. 6. [b]The skins should have tooltips when you hover over a button too long[/b]. And I don't get why all skins dont support all features. It seems strange to me to have different playback controls or some missing for certain skins. Often times the icons are too small to see if you are playing it on say a 25" TV as opposed to a 5ft plasma. It would be nice if there were some standard rules about the skins and their functionality. I am kind of wanting a skin which uses features of the Blue MP look and the MCE wannabe default skins - a combo of those with tooltips would be great. I think those are most of the setup issues I have. Here are a couple of nice-to-have issues - that would be a bonus to me if they could be solved. * Is there a way in the Browser plugin of MP to have a "increase font size even for CSS pages" available? Many sites are still to tiny to read on screen. Perhaps even having a panning navigator where you could scroll horizontally but magnify the page would even be a solution instead of trying to fit the page on my TV out'ed screen? * Why do I sometimes get 404's on the My News RSS reader when it can say get the headlines from Wired Magazine but not the articles? I know they exist. Is this some kind of RSS reader formating issue? * Does MP provide "intelligent" recording in the event I ever actually get the EPG and setopbox control integrated into it smoothly? It would be nice to have that kind of feature like Sage, (but then again I've never been able to import the NZ reven XML guide into anything but MP or got all media). Are those algorithms too hard? Or should I just move back to the USA? ;) NZ feels like the moon sometimes with no Tivo. * One of the biggest reasons I love MP is the support and the ideas for features coming out for integration into it. I like the Trailers thing (although despite my broadband connection - some of them still stutter and stop during playback? is this a streaming issue? They stream fine in IE outside of MP?) I REALLY LIKE the idea of things like Yahoo Music Video integration or Trailers or ideally a smart YouTube integration - so I could automate MP to automatically get Daily Show or Colbert Report clips from You Tube for watching at my leisure - as our cable system here Sky does not have Comedy Central or Sci Fi channels (yes NZ is a 3rd world country :evil: ). So how could I make such a plugin and is/when will FLV flash video be supported withing MP? thanks for any and all input to this massive post. I just thought I would respond to your query about what new users are perplexed with. And I have tried every PVR in the past 2 weeks (Sage, Beyond, Got All Media, GBPVR) and settled on MP as it seems the most feature packed and I've had the most success (and performance) with it... plz help or respond if you can to this... :) [/QUOTE]
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Calling all MP New Zealanders (Both of you!!)
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